Deborah Bloomfield

An “unknown disease” has reportedly killed 143 people in a rural part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in Central Africa. Symptoms include fever, headache, cough, and anemia, but little is currently known about the illness.  The deaths were recorded between November 10 and November 25 in the DRC’s Panzi health zone of […]

Like Gina Montana in Scarface, Barbarian soldiers potentially sniffed narcotics from dainty little drug spoons when heading into battle against the ferocious Roman army, according to new research. Somewhat classier than a rolled-up banknote, these ancient instruments were often attached to soldiers’ belts and may have been used to deliver hits of anything from opium […]

Every now and then a horrifying news story reaches the airwaves, detailing a gaping chasm that’s appeared seemingly without warning beneath our very feet. These sinkholes can be deadly, growing large enough to swallow entire buildings – but where do they go? What’s waiting at the bottom of a sinkhole depends on how it was […]

In a matter of hours, a small asteroid will burn over the Siberian skies. This is only the 11th time that an asteroid has been predicted to hit our planet before it actually happened, but it shows that the system of planetary defense is working! At around 4:15 pm UTC today, the asteroid will burn […]

If you’ve ever taken a few minutes out of your day to look at old footage and photographs of astronauts bouncing around on the Moon, you may notice a lack of stars in the background. Let’s get the obvious out of the way. It’s not some big conspiracy where NASA decided to fake the whole […]

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It’s that time of year again when humans hack down living trees and bring them inside to hang plastic decorations on, to celebrate the birth of a man who was possibly born in April. While real trees are marginally better for the environment than fake, plastic trees, it’s best to give them a bit of […]

Primordial black holes (PBHs) could become captured by rocky planets and asteroids, where they may consume their liquid cores and leave them hollow, a team of physicists has suggested. In the current age of the universe, black holes form when gigantic stars run out of fuel and collapse under their own gravity. This places a […]

Etching seems like such an old-fashioned technique (for a time it was also an Olympic competition) that you don’t normally associate it with cutting-edge technology. However, integrated chips used in all our electronic devices get etched, with patterns printed on a silicon wafer. And there is one machine in the world that does that. Advanced […]

Hundreds of new species are discovered every year, from frogs that don’t croak to the fish that work at the turtle carwash. Some areas are hotspots for these new discoveries, sometimes because they are almost inaccessible – but some might be in your own backyard. Some areas are particularly large and can carry a wealth […]

Which word captures the spirit of 2024: “brain rot” or “enshittification”? Both have been highlighted by separate dictionary publishers as words that reflect the zeitgeist of the past year – and both show how online culture continues to shape the way we communicate with each other (for better or worse). “Brain rot” has been awarded […]

It may not always be obvious from reading certain social media comment sections, but we humans have really big brains for our body size. Growing a large brain takes a whole lot of energy, so it’s long been wondered exactly how evolution ended up sending us down this path. A new study is proposing an […]

Antarctica’s Lake Enigma has become slightly less enigmatic. It was once assumed the faraway lake was frozen solid from top to bottom, but scientists have now discovered a massive hidden body of unfrozen water beneath its chunky ice surface. Here, amid the frosty waters, they found a unique ecosystem teeming with life. Lake Enigma is […]

The Solar System has a new confirmed comet, after repeated observations of candidate 456P/PANSTARRS showed it is an active, icy body. The object, discovered in 2021 and given the temporary name 2021 L4, orbits between Mars and Jupiter in the main asteroid belt, taking 3,956 days (10.83 years) to do so. When it was first […]

A team of scientists have created a new kind of wood that glows in the dark thanks to the presence of a fungus that exhibits bioluminescence. It sounds like a building material fresh out of Avatar, but this ghostly glow is seen in nature as what’s known as “foxfire” – a phenomenon that inspired the […]

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is getting close to announcing the official name of (164207) 2004 GU9, one of Earth’s quasi-moons. Members of the public have proposed multiple names for it, and now the public has once again been called upon to help, with the chance to pick the winning one among seven selected by […]

Efforts to build a global treaty to combat plastic pollution fell apart over the weekend. While international agreements are rarely straightforward, many believe powerful forces were working to undermine the talks: big oil and countries hellbent on fossil fuel production. Almost 200 nations recently met in Busan, South Korea, for the fifth session of the […]

The Arctic Ocean could have a period effectively devoid of ice as soon as summer 2027, new research shows. The exact date is not a prediction; there is enough annual variation and uncertainty that the near complete absence of ice may take many years longer. One way or another, however, we are heading for summers […]

For the first time in half a century, scientists have hit on a new treatment for asthma attacks. Clinical trial results have shown that a drug called benralizumab is effective at treating acute attacks of both asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and it works better than the current standard steroid treatment. Asthma is […]

There are plenty of great tree mysteries out there, from the beech tree masting mystery to why all Cook pine trees lean toward the equator no matter where they are on Earth. But before you check out those, let’s start with some plant basics; where do they get their mass from, or the matter that […]